Open Farm Sunday: A glorious day with a record number of visitors
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We had an amazing day. The weather was great. Vistor numbers were up. We raised more money than previous years.
LEAF Open Farm Sunday is a national event which sees farmers across the country open up their farms to visitors, enabling everyone to discover more about where our food comes from. LEAF OFS organises the whole things and supplies all it’s participants with free resources thanks to it’s generous sponsors.
Our Open Farm Sunday event had a real buzz about it this year, obviously due to COVID it’s had to be cancelled two years in a row. Also in part due to lock-down we’ve had real growth in our membership and that brings renewed enthusiasm, and means we can do more.
Veg sales
Lee-Anne and Jenny at the veg sale tablePlant sales did really well this year
Cafe
Cafe area was buzzing, bunting looks great, and people seemed to enjoy our cakes.We had some amazing home made cakes for sale, and the ladies made the display really inviting.Look at this magnificent cake by KatyRuth, Martin (inside serving drinks) and Andy’s mum and sister serving cakes with a smile.
Farm tours
Harry, one of our founding members and Geraldine gave a detailed guided tour of the farm every hour.The Oxford Sandy & Blacks spent most of the time conveniently near the fence so our visitors could see them.
Decoration and tidying up
We don’t often decorate the farm so it was nice to see some cute little scarecrows.We’ve also given our kids play area a really good fettle and the children seemed to really enjoy it.One of the good things about Open Farm Sunday is that it forces us to make an extra special effort to get the farm as clean and tidy as possible.We worked hard the day before to get our new veg area ready and fenced off to keep badgers out.
Games and activities
We left giant skittles, frisbees and other outdoor games in the field for visitors to enjoy.There were craft activities for the younger visitors in the roundhouseWe even had an egg’n’spoon race on the games fieldOur ever positive and smily KellyOur visitors enjoyed our beautiful site
A photo history of the farm
Stuart prepared a history of the farm in pictures from 2009 to 2022 and a display of his black and white photos of farm members. This was inside the new greenhouse, so new it hasn’t got doors on it yet or plants in it – hence why it was available for display purposes.
Raffle
A big thank you to the local businesses that donated prizes in support of our project…
Bradfield Brewery
The Plough
The Old Horns
The Nags
CS Photography
Dance Dynamics
We had some great prizes and received a lot of support from local businesses who donated prizes. There were a lot of vouchers for meals and other services which are not obvious in the photo.The raffle prize draw
Prep
Even just cutting the grass is quite a big task on the farm these days, although the beast (the mower) performs well and seems indestructible with our new paddock grass there is so much to do.The day before James really got stuck in and helped replace 6 fence posts that were rotten along the side of the pig pen.
